I, as most of you know, am a stay at home mom. Not exactly the job I saw myself doing—and yes I DO consider it a job. My husband admits it’s harder than his job is. So while I run after my two toddlers and cook up our next (and last!) little beanlette, Mike gets up early for work 5 mornings a week. He leaves at 7.30 to get there by 8.30 Friday and Saturday, switches to leaving at 6.45 to get there by 7.30 for Sunday, and then goes back to leaving at 7.30 for Monday and Tuesday. Yeah, he has Wednesday and Thursday off. It just works out better since he can assist with doctor appointments and all that lovely, mundane domestic crap.

So needless to say, he leaves early. So early that I can’t (read that won’t) get up that much earlier to make breakfast. And he won’t eat breakfast that early anyways, so the gesture would be lost. Instead he waits until his first break of the day to eat. Which means that I have to come up with something portable and quick for him to take in for breakfast.

So I scoured the internet and pinterest and foodgawker. I already have breakfast burritos and breakfast sandwiches in our rotation. But those can get old after awhile. I do believe there is a post somewhere on here about the burritos, and if not I’ll make sure to get it up. But anyways–I found the niftiest thing ever!

Mike loves oatmeal. I don’t get it. I personally think it’s bland and mushy and just—I can’t do it. But he loves it. So when I found a way to make instant oatmeal packets at home…well, you can safely say I was excited. This morning, my darling toddlers actually behaved enough to let me get a few things done. Gasp! So I made up a few packets. It was so easy!

All you need are some snack bags or small containers (we had the plastic bags so I used them, but when we run out I’ll use our containers), some oats, some small bowls, and something to measure with. For convenience sake, I’d say a coffee grinder is nice, but it’s not strictly a necessity.

The basic recipe, which I got here, is as follows:
*3 cups of oats (the quick cook kind)
*toppings of your choice

Yeah that’s it. There is salt in the original recipe, but I left it out.

So grind up some of your oats (about a cup). Either use your nifty coffee grinder or just beat them to death with a rolling pin. Take out some aggression…hum, maybe I should have used the rolling pin. Oh well. Anyways, then you simply combine 1/4 cup of your unpowdered oats with 2 TB of the powdered oats. That’s your basic oatmeal. Yay!

**Note: this recipe made 8 bags for me. I wasn’t measuring toooo carefully since I was watching over my kids, but that’s about right. **

To serve it, you simply add the packet to about 2/3 cup hot water and let it sit for 2 mins. Then enjoy!

Mike likes pretty plain oatmeal…just brown sugar or maple syrup. So he can add those after the hot water step. If you have other mix ins you like feel free to add them whenever. On the other sites I’ve seen this on, some they’ve added when making the packets, and some after the water. Whatever works for you.

So, like I said, this was my first time making them and since Mike’s already at work, he can’t weigh in on how they compare to the store bough instant packets. And there’s no way in hell I’m going near them since I’m already nauseous today. But I will have him write up what he thinks of them. Overall, I think it’s pretty spiffy when you consider the cost.

**The following math is being done mostly in my head so forgive any errors…you can let me know and I’ll fix it**

At Walmart (which I hate and hardly ever shop at), a 42 oz can of Great Value oats is $3.18. That 42 oz is roughly 5.25 cups of oats. Which means that you could potentially get 1.5 recipes out of it, which means about 12 bags of oatmeal. I found a box of 5 packets of instant oatmeal from google and the lowest price it could find was $2.99 for 5 packets. Granted this was an online retailer, so shipping brought it up to a little over $9. Yeah I’d call that savings.

So keep an eye out for Mike’s weigh in on how the oatmeal tastes! And get crackin’! Or should I say beating. With the rolling pin. You know you want to.